Raptor (104 page)

But I found very few in residence who were of any Germanic lineage. The majority of the men I met were the squashed-nose Slovenes, and they were ignorant even of their own people’s origin and history. In their morose and melancholy way, they could tell me only that the Slovenes had come from somewhere far to the north and east of here, and over time had drifted southward and westward.

I asked one old man, as we sat in a marketside taberna, “Was it the Huns who drove your ancestors out of their original homeland?”

“Who knows?” he said uncaringly. “It may have been the pozorzheni.”

“What?” I said, for it had been some while since I had heard that word.

Laboriously he managed to render it in other words, and I comprehended. He meant those “women to beware of.”

“Iésus,” I muttered. “I have heard them mentioned in backwoods outposts, by superstitious rustics, but I would hardly have expected the civilized inhabitants of Lviv to be timorous of a tribe of
women.
Or even to believe in such a preposterous myth.”

“We believe,” he said simply. “We are careful not to provoke them to anger when they come here.”

“What? They come here?”

“Every spring,” he said. “Only a few of them. They ride in to Lviv to trade for necessities that their tribe cannot procure in the eastern wilderness. It is not difficult to tell them from the other women arriving at the market. They come heavily armed, and they come naked to the waist, as if they were leather-skinned barbarian men, and they brazenly strut and swagger, flaunting those bare breasts.”

“What do they trade
with?”

“They bring pack horses laden with their tribe’s winter harvest of otter pelts. Also freshwater pearls that they have gathered. Of course, otter is not the most valuable kind of fur, nor are the mussel pearls worth very much. But, as I say, we are chary of provoking those terrible women, so we are extravagantly generous in our bartering with them. That is why they have not attacked this village, or even plundered any farmstead roundabout, within living memory.”

I said skeptically, “Then, for all you really know, their swagger is no more than bluster. Whatever they may have been in times past, they may now be as feeble and docile as kittens.”

“I doubt that,” he said. “In my younger days, I was one of several men who stopped a runaway horse in the street yonder, as it came galloping headlong from the east. Its rider was clearly dying when we helped him down, and he died without telling of his adventures among the pozorzheni, or how he had escaped from them. He
could
not tell, because he was carrying his torn-out tongue in one hand. But his desperate ride from there to here must have been hideously painful, because he was raw flesh all over, with no skin anywhere on his body. Indeed, we only knew he was a
man
because in his other hand he was carrying his genitals.”

I went back to the hospitium to eat, and I had chosen an inconvenient hour, for it was crowded. The dining chamber was no spacious hall of well-apart couches. It had only long, slatted tables, with benches alongside, and all close together. I wedged myself onto a bench between two other diners, and found that I was seated directly across from Thor. When our eyes met, his opened wide in surprise, and he gave a start as if to jump up abruptly from the table, but he too was tightly crammed in this place.

Instantly I knew why my unexpected arrival had startled him. Even above the other odors all about—of many human bodies, of lentil soup and hot bread and strong beer—I could scent from Thor the unmistakable lettucey aroma of a woman’s most intimate exudation, still fresh. It had only recently been exuded—because when a woman’s juice gets stale it smells of fish—and it had not come from either Veleda or Genovefa. Thor perhaps saw my nostrils dilate, for he again got that genuinely frightened look on his face, and his eyes darted about as if seeking a way of escape. But what he saw in the room seemed to fortify him. He put on an ingratiating smile and said across the table, just loud enough for me to hear over the room’s hubbub:

“You caught me before I had the chance, this time, to bathe myself sweetly clean in the therma. But would you kill me here, dear Thorn, in such a crowded place? That
would
create a commotion loud enough to be heard by Thorn’s king and all of Thorn’s other friends.”

He was right; I could do nothing to him at the moment. Again I had lost any appetite I had for food, so I shoved my way upright and out from between the men on either side of me—getting cursed for my rudeness—and elbowed my way out of the crowded room—getting more curses—and stormed off to the stable, my hands itching to get a stranglehold on Maggot.

“You tetzte tord!” I raged, seizing him and flapping him like a saddle blanket. “Are you merely lazy? Or totally incompetent? Or criminally disloyal to me?”

“Fr-fráuja,” he pleaded, as best he could. “Wh-what have I done?”

“Failed to do!” I roared, slamming him against the stable wall. “Thor has been… I mean Genovefa, in the guise of Thor, has had illicit congress today with someone here in Lviv. How did she elude you? Anywhere a Thor could go, you could have followed. Were you too
lazy?”

“Ne, fráuja,” he whined, sliding limply down to the ground. “I did follow.”

“Then where did Thor… where did she go in that disguise? Were you too incompetent to recognize a meeting with somebody? A tryst of some sort?”

“Ne, fráuja,” he whimpered, doubling himself into a knot and wrapping his arms protectively over his head. “I knew the house to be a lupanar.”

“What?” I said, taken aback. “A common whorehouse? You watched Thor go… you watched Genovefa go disguised into… you watched a
decent woman
walk boldly into a
lupanar?
And you did not come running to tell me of such an unheard-of happenstance?”

“I did not, fráuja,” he moaned. But then Maggot proved to be more courageous than I would have thought. He raised his woebegone face from under his sheltering arms and said bravely, “You were right to accuse me, fráuja. I was being criminally disloyal to you.”

I held back the fist I had poised to strike him, and said through gritted teeth, “Explain yourself.”

“There is much I have not reported to you.”

“Then do so this instant!”

In a sort of wail, sobbing occasionally, he said, “I do not know what manner of woman
is
the fráujin Genovefa. What sort
would
go into a lupanar? Back in Noviodunum, I supposed her to be a man named Thor. So, when our journey was first proposed, I worried that you and he might someday come to blows over the lovely lady Swanilda, and I feared for my own safety if that should occur. But then, no sooner was Swanilda dead than Thor was revealed to be also a female. I could not discern
where
the jealousies and rivalries might have lain, but
you
seemed happy enough, so—”

“This is not a report! This is gibberish!”

But he went right on, “So I determined to say nothing—to do nothing on the journey that might cause jealousy or trouble—to
see
nothing else that I was not supposed to see.”

“Imbecile, I
told
you to see! I ordered you to keep your eyes on Genovefa!”

“But by then, fráuja, she had already once betrayed you. The very day you told me that.”

I hated to admit it, but I said, “I knew she had. She bade you ride on ahead, and then she lay down with the charcoal-burner. That is
why
I told you not to let her out of your sight from then on.”

Maggot was regarding me with a blank expression. “Charcoal-burner?”

I said impatiently, “The grimy old man who passed us on the trail earlier that day. Surely you saw him. An aged Slovene peasant. A nauthing.” I laughed a bitter laugh.
“That
was the lowly lover she embraced.”

“Akh, ne,
a lover lowlier than a Slovene, fráuja Thorn!” Maggot cried, bowing his head and pounding his own fists on it. “You are mistaken about the charcoal-burner, or you were misled. The only nauthing who embraced the fráujin Genovefa that day was an even lowlier Armenian!”

I stammered witlessly, “You?…
You!…
How
dared
you?”

“It was she who dared. I never would have.” And he babbled rapidly, to get the story out before I cut him to pieces, but I was stricken too numb to draw my blade. “She said if I refused she would cry rape and I would be slain, so I might as well have the joy of her and merely
risk
being slain. She said she had long wondered whether it is true, what is said of men with big noses. That is why I was so affrighted, fráuja Thorn, when soon afterward you also made reference to my nose. Anyway, I told her there is no relation between a man’s nose and his svans. I told her that
all
Armenians have big noses, but I have never known of one who had more of a svans than my own meager thing. Armenian
women
have big noses, too, and they do not have any svans at all.” He paused and said thoughtfully, “But neither do those women have… a something down there… as big as what I encountered on the fráujin Genovefa…” I only stared at him, and he hurried on:

“But, for all I protested, she demanded demonstration. And then, when we were done, she said I was right, and she laughed and derided my puniness. And then you returned from the hunt, fráuja Thorn, and that was the second time I criminally neglected to speak. Then there were third and fourth and fifth times, because the fráujin Genovefa—sometimes in the dress of Thor—has been disporting herself, at least twice a day, with one man or woman after another, ever since the moment we arrived here in Lviv, and each time has rushed to the therma to cleanse herself before sharing your bed again. Indeed, I have been concerned that she might pick up some foul disease from these squalid Slovenes and inflict it on you. But, fráuja Thorn, how
could
I disclose all that without incriminating myself? Oh vái, of course I knew that I would have to, soon or later, that it would all be discovered. And I am ready to take my punishment. But, please, before you kill me, may I return to you one thing that belongs to you?”

I was too dazed to reply, so he scuttled off somewhere in the stable and immediately came back carrying something.

“I found it tucked away in the sleeping fur of the lady Swanilda when I first unrolled that,” he said. “I thought you might have wondered what became of it. And since I am about to die…”

But I had never seen it before. And seeing it now, I was at least momentarily distracted from my rage and bafflement and distress. It was a circlet woven of leaves and tendrils, such as women idling in gardens often make of flowers as a pretty crown to wear around the head. At first I thought that Swanilda must have made it just as a pastime, for I had never seen her wear it. But then I realized what it was woven of—oak leaves, now dry and crumbly, and clusters of the tiny linden flowers, those still sweet-smelling though long withered. And I remembered the legend of the oak and the linden, and I knew why Swanilda had lovingly fashioned the circlet, and why she had kept it. I turned it over and over in my hands, and I said softly, sadly, tenderly:

“That prediction that the old wise-sayer Meirus made… I think he was wrong about the finality of it. I think Swanilda, wherever she is, has not ceased holding me dear.”

“Wherever she is, ja,” Maggot said, sniffling sympathetically. “Wherever she is, Thor put her there.”

I raised my eyes from the rustic crown and fixed them hard on Maggot, and did not even have to ask. He flinched away from me, more guiltily and fearfully than before, saying:

“I thought you knew, fráuja. As I said, you seemed then happy enough. It was Thor who overpowered her and put the noose about her neck and hauled her, hand over hand, to the warehouse beam and let her hang there and twist and kick until she strangled. I think Thor knew that I was there in the shadows, and I think he did not care. That is why I assumed that you and he—or she, I mean—”

“Enough,” I said hoarsely. “Be silent.”

He shut his mouth with almost a click, and I stood pondering for some moments, still turning the oak-and-linden circlet in my hands. When at last I spoke again, I did not care what Maggot might make of my words.

“You were right. It is true. I have tacitly conspired in every evil deed that has been done by that fitchet bitch and son of a fitchet bitch. Thor and I are but the two sides of a single coin, and that coin is of base metal. It must be put to the smelter and refined and minted anew. To do that, I must first atone. I shall begin by letting you live, Maggot. I will even respectfully call you Maghib from now on. Get ready to ride. We are leaving this place. And there will be only the two of us. Saddle my horse and yours, and fasten our packs on the other.”

I tossed the circlet away, so I would not be impeded, and drew my sword and went striding back across the stableyard to the hospitium and into its dining chamber, and swept my gaze about. Thor was no longer there. I pelted up the stairs to our chamber, and found the door wide open. Thor had been there, and obviously had been in a great hurry to leave it again, for our belongings were all disarranged and scattered about. Hastily rummaging through the things he had left behind, I could tell that he had changed into Genovefa’s garb and had carried away with him
only
his Genovefa clothes and appurtenances, none of Thor’s except his sword. I discovered, also, that he had purloined one thing of mine—that coiled bronze breast guard that had taken his fancy when he first saw it.

I heard some loud outcry from downstairs, and went to the window. In the yard, the hospitium’s keeper and a few of his servants and stable grooms were milling about, and the proprietor was shouting for someone to fetch a “lékar,” meaning a medicus. I ran out again and to the stable, and found Maghib stretched supine on the straw between our two saddled horses. Protruding from his chest was the hilt of a knife I recognized. But this time Genovefa’s thrust had been overhasty. Maghib was still alive, still conscious, and though the hovering attendants solicitously tried to hush him, he was still Armenianly able to talk, at least to choke out a few words through the blood bubbling from his mouth: